


25 Days of Christmas

by andifiquitnow



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 25 Days of Fic, Christmas, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 08:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 14,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andifiquitnow/pseuds/andifiquitnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>25 short fics responding to given prompts. I didn't originally intend them to make them all fit together, but it turns out they actually do, quite nicely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote these during December and actually managed to stay on track! One fic every day in what was a super crazy month. I didn't post them at the time because I wanted a chance to do some editing first. So here they are, 25 Christmas fics on January 9. It's still the season, right?

The Doctor drew the line at mistletoe. He liked Christmas. Loved it even. Always had a good time. Except when he was running for his life, and sometimes even then. So he was fine with Amy decorating the Tardis, and he liked the way she got them all into it, him and Rory. She said it felt like she had a proper family to do Christmas with at last. So that was good. But he was over nine hundred years old and on his eleventh regeneration, and did not see the need for mistletoe. Dangerous stuff, that.

“Pleeeease,” Amy said again. “Come on! It’ll be fun!”

“For who,” the Doctor said pointedly.

“For me,” she said.

“Where did you even get mistletoe?”

“Oh, you know, around.” She batted her eyes at him.

“Rory!” He yelled.

Amy sighed.

“Uh, yes?” Rory appeared from behind the console, where he had been hiding. Amy and the Doctor were over by the front door, where she wanted to hang the offending plant.

“Rory, you don’t think there should be mistletoe, do you,” the Doctor asked.

“Well,” Rory hesitated.

Behind the Doctor, Amy widened her eyes and gestured wildly at herself.

“I think mistletoe...would be nice,” Rory said.

Amy nodded.

“Oh, Rory,” the Doctor said. “I should have known. Fine. Hang the stupid thing.”

Amy jumped in delight and attempted to attach the mistletoe to the doorframe. The Doctor looked on skeptically. She couldn’t reach.

Amy turned around with a big, fake smile on her face. “Doctor,” she said in her nicest voice, and held up the plant.

He sighed, snatched it from her fingers, and hung it just below the light bulbs. Amy beamed at him, and he should have been prepared for what was coming, but somehow wasn’t, and she leaned up swiftly and kissed him on the mouth.

“Hey!” Rory said.

“Mmhp!” The Doctor said. He leapt back out of range, eyeing Amy warily.

“Oh, it’s only a bit of fun,” she said.

“Right.” He started up towards the console when suddenly there came a knock at the door. The Doctor whipped around as Amy moved to open it.

“Don’t!” he said. “Wait. Move up here, by Rory.”

“Are we expecting anyone?” she asked. She did what she was told.

“No,” the Doctor said. “We’re not.”

He moved cautiously to stand by the door. “I really must get a peephole,” he muttered to himself.

The knock came again, followed by a voice he knew well and hadn’t heard since the business in America with the Silence.

“Doctor? Hellooo,” the voice said.

He yanked open the door. “River Song.”

She grinned at him. “Hello, sweetie.”

He was almost beyond asking how she always managed to find him. But not quite. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Waiting for you, of course!” she said. “We always meet on this planet to get a tree.”

His look of confusion slowed her words.

“Unless of course,” she continued, “we’ve never done that before.”

“Well, no, actually,” he said. “But it sounds lovely. Would you like to come in?” He stood back and gestured gallantly, just as Amy cleared her throat pointedly.

“Hi Amy,” River said. “Hi Rory.”

“Hi River, and before you go a step further, I have to say, look up.” Amy looked positively delighted. This was turning out way better than what she’d originally planned.

River looked up and the Doctor simultaneously tried to back away. River was faster.

“Oh, no you don’t, dear,” she said, grabbing his jacket and lifting an eyebrow. “Mistletoe has to be observed. It’s back luck if you don’t.” And she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

At least he was semi-prepared this time, unlike when she’d done the same in Stormcage. He managed not to flail or do anything else stupid. And it was actually quite nice, now that he knew what to expect. Conscious of Amy and Rory, however, he pulled back quickly, but to his surprise, wished he didn’t have to.

River smiled just for him, where the Ponds couldn’t see her. “We’ll finish that later,” she breathed in his ear.

The Doctor shivered. How very alarming. But also how very delightful.

River laughed in adoration at how jumpy she could make him so early in his timeline. She fixed him with expression of pure desire, just for fun, then ducked past him to hug Amy and Rory.

“Love the mistletoe, Amy,” River said, guessing correctly who had put it there.

Amy grinned.

The Doctor make a sound of fake annoyance as he followed River up the ramp to fly them away. Maybe mistletoe wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

 


	2. Hot Chocolate

River Song didn’t much like hot chocolate, even 52nd century hot chocolate, even with whisky in it. It was too sweet for her and at the same time too watered down. She generally preferred to just eat the chocolate and drink the whisky. So when the nice TA whom she’d been watching work up the courage to ask her out finally did, and he asked her out for hot chocolate, she nearly refused. But she didn’t, because he was very sweet and sort of good looking and decently smart, which she liked. Bit young. She did have to give him points for trying to be seasonal. With the snow outside and the decorations inside, the university was practically a Christmas wonderland. Hot chocolate did seem to fit the ambiance.

They chatted about this and that and got into a long debate about the merits of one kind of archeological tool over another.

“Gosh, I just love hot chocolate,” he said.

River nodded, sipping a little bit more of hers. She wasn’t going to get into a debate about it. It was just a stupid drink. But she couldn’t help but think that the Doctor wouldn’t like hot chocolate. He was over nine hundred years old and a Time Lord and the man she’d tried to murder. Hot chocolate was for eight year olds.

She hadn’t seen the Doctor since the day he’d left her in the hospital with a blank, blue journal and vague promises of things to come. She’d been studying him though, at university, and she was quite sure that with all he’d seen and done, he wouldn’t like some stupid drink with whipped cream and marshmallows. Marshmallows!

So when the nice TA walked her back to her apartment and asked if she’d like to see him again and she refused, she swore to herself that it had nothing to do with his choice of beverage. She just didn’t click with him, that was all. He wasn’t confident enough, he didn’t look like he could save the world by making it up as he went along, and, frankly, he didn’t have a Tardis or a sonic screwdriver, two hearts, and a bowtie. River considered having sex with him anyway, but he seemed like the type who would take it to mean more than it did, and she didn’t want to be unkind.

Seven years later and 3114 years earlier, River Song was waiting impatiently for the Doctor to come outside. He was having Christmas with the Ponds and she wanted to surprise them, but she wanted him alone for a minute first. She had broken out of Stormcage and was dressed in her finest and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to give her husband a good long, private kiss before spending time with their family. She knew he would come outside at some point, just to check on the Tardis and get a breath of fresh air. He loved Christmas but he’d had so many that she knew it got overwhelming sometimes.

She didn’t have to wait much longer.

The Doctor stepped out the back door, and River could hear Amy and Rory laughing uproariously at something inside, sounding rather tipsy. The door swung shut behind the Doctor, cutting off the sound of laughter and music. She watched him take a deep breath of cold night air before she stepped out of the shadows.

“Hello, sweetie,” she said.

The Doctor jumped in surprise. “River!” A big smile crossed his face.

“I know you weren’t expecting me,” she said, waltzing up to him, “but I thought I’d turn up anyway.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and slid in close.

He hugged her back tightly.

“River,” he said into her hair. “I’ve missed you.”

“You too, my Doctor,” she said. “It’s been a long time.” The tightness of his grip told her that it had been a long time for him too. Maybe even longer than for her. She could almost feel him trying not to remember the happy Christmases he’d had before, with Rose, and before her, other people he’d loved. She loved him just for being here to try with the Ponds.

She pulled back enough to see him and put her hands on either side of his face. She smiled and kissed him, the version of the kiss they wouldn’t be able to do in front of anyone else, bodies pressed together, his hands pulling on her hair, her hips pushing forward just enough. She backed him up against the outside of the house and they leaned against it for long enough that River had to pull back with a laugh.

“Sweetie, we have to stop, or we’ll never get inside. And I wouldn’t mind saying hello to my parents.”

The Doctor pressed one more kiss to her lips. “I know,” he said. “As long as there’s more of this later.”

“Oh, there will be,” River said.

The Doctor pulled them away from the wall. “To Christmas, then!” He said. “Come inside, it’s great. There’s presents and food and a tree and everything! I just made hot chocolate.”

River giggled. “You what?”

“You know, hot chocolate! It’s chocolate, you drink it. Well, it’s not actually chocolate. It’s a chemical powder you add milk too, but it works just the same.”

“You like that stuff?”

“Of course! Doesn’t everybody? I love hot chocolate.”

River followed the Doctor into the house as he yanked open the door, proclaiming her presence to Amy and Rory. She would never stop learning things about this man.


	3. Snow

The sound of the Tardis whooshing made River Song’s heart do a little flutter. It always did. She threw down her journal and jumped up, standing to one side as the Tardis landed inside her jail cell. When he was in a rush, the Doctor would land outside the bars and she would break out, but she knew he was taking his time and doing something special when he maneuvered the blue box into the tiny space, saving her the trouble of a reverse B&E.

The Tardis came fully into view and the door swung open, the Doctor’s head sticking out.

“Merry Christmas, River!” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s December 10th, dear.”

That didn’t phase him. “Merry December 10th! Are you ready to go?”

“Well that depends,” she said. “Go where? As you can see, I’m very busy.” She looked around her empty cell teasingly.

The Doctor surveyed the small space. “Well, fine then. I’ll take someone else to the Winter Fair of Danzolia.”

“The Winter Fair of Danzolia! I’ve always wanted to go there.”

The Doctor winked at her. “Then get your coat.  
  
\---  
  
The fair was perfect. It was a winter market with stores and stalls and people selling gifts, trinkets, and food. The Doctor and River walked around, picking things up, trying things on, and generally avoiding trouble, probably because there was no trouble to be had, not because they had any interest in avoiding it.

River finally had to admit she’d had enough and they headed back to the Tardis, parked just outside of town. They leaned against it, enjoying the quiet after the busy marketplace, sipping steaming drinks.

The Doctor gazed out contentedly at the fields and forest beyond the town. “You know what this day needs to be perfect? Snow.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s going to,” River said.

“It’ll snow for us,” the Doctor said. He reached up and fiddled with something at the top of the Tardis door. A light arced up and away and then there was snow falling all around them. “Basic atmospheric excitation,” he said, and was hit with a sudden longing for Donna. He pushed it away though, and turned to River to watch her reaction.

She wasn’t reacting like he’d expected. After her initial surprise she looked sort of displeased.

“I...made it snow,” he said, hesitantly. “It’s seasonal now.”

“It was fine before,” she snapped.

That was unexpected.

“Can we just go?” She didn’t wait for an answer, opening the Tardis door and ducking inside.

He followed quickly, almost getting hit in the face with the door as she shut it aggressively.

River was already working the controls to fly them away. He stood beside her silently, not sure what was happening.

She needed the lever in front of him and he flipped it for her before she reached it.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“Did you...” the Doctor said. “Did you not like that I made it snow? Was it too flashy? I don’t have to do flashy things if you don’t want.”

Her hands stilled. “No, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just, I preferred it when it wasn’t snowing.” She turned to face him. “I’m sorry, I overreacted.” She smiled. “What do you want to do next?”

The Doctor was not dissuaded. “Why did you like it better when it wasn’t snowing?”

River looked like she wasn’t going to tell him, but the expression on his face changed her mind.

“The first regeneration I can remember,” she said slowly, “was after I escaped from the spacesuit. I was so young. I regenerated right there on the street. I spent that winter living outside in New York City. I was a child with no parents, no relatives, no documentation. I had never been to school or the hospital or the clinic. I had never been inside a store. I didn’t know what money was. I thought all adults were for killing or to be killed so I wouldn’t talk to any, and Social Services never found me. I was totally incapable of caring for myself, but I was the only one who could. It was so cold that year. It snowed all winter. And I remember every time it would start again, every time I would see the first flakes, it meant another storm and that it would be harder to find food and shelter. Even now, snow, just, it reminds me of that. Of that year in New York.”

She met the Doctor’s eyes. He looked like she had hit him. She’d never see him look like that before, but then she’d never talked much about her past. She’d thought it would hurt him and she’d been right. No matter what happened from now on, she vowed in that moment not to show him the damage. She couldn’t take it.

“River,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say. She had suffered so much in her life, all because of him. He pictured Amelia Pond, the only child he’d known in recent memory, outside in the winter with no one to love her, and his hearts felt like they would break for River Song.

“I know,” she said. “It’s okay.”

She flew them back to Stormcage without asking, landing inside her cell and stepping out the door.

The Doctor followed. He didn’t want to leave her yet, or ever, really. “Do you...do you want me to stay for a bit?” He asked.

 _More than anything._ River didn’t say it. “No, sweetie, you go. The guards will be doing their rounds soon and it wouldn’t do for the man I killed to be seen lounging in my jail cell.” She managed to put a teasing spin on the words.

The Doctor nodded, then pulled her to him in a fierce kiss.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said, when he released her.

“I know,” she said. “And who knows, I might see you before then. I’ve got a new way through those bars I want to try.”

He kissed her again, not responding to her banter.

“Go,” she said.

He went.

The whooshing sound of the Tardis made her heart flutter, as it always did.


	4. Candy Canes

The Doctor and River wandered around the Winter Fair of Danzolia. It wasn’t often that they spent time together without running from or to something, and it was nice. A bit odd, but nice. The Doctor kept pulling River over to different booths, having her look at this thing and that thing. He tried not to be impatient. He loved spending time with River, but activities like this tended to bore him. He poked at a few things hoping for trouble, but there was none to be had. He had only gone to the Winter Fair because River had said how much she wanted to. It surprised him, actually, that she did. This didn’t seem like her type of activity either. But she seemed to be having a good time, trying things on and pointing things out. So that was good.

When it got too chilly on the streets, they entered the indoor marketplace, where the food stalls were set up, with games and a storyteller in one corner with benches all around her. It was a mix of people from all over the galaxy. Many humans, and many others, too.

The Doctor wanted to listen to the storyteller, but that desire didn’t last long. She was telling a tale of something that had happened long ago and getting it all wrong.

“That’s not what happened,” the Doctor mumbled.

“Hush,” River said.

“Well it’s not!” He managed to be silent for thirty more seconds. “Oh, come on!” He said, a little more loudly.

“What, were you there?” River asked.

“As a matter of fact, I was,” the Doctor said. “And the chalice looked nothing like that.”

They managed to sit through the rest of the story, the Doctor making occasional noises of dissent.

River looked at him in amusement when it was over. “Okay then, what do you want to do?”

A man bumped into them suddenly, carrying a tray. “Butterbeer, butterbeer!” He said.

“Butter-what?” said the Doctor.

“Butterbeer,” said the man. “It’s an old Earth delicacy. Dates from the late 20th century. They used to drink it all the time! Drink of choice! Better than water!”

The Doctor and River shared a glance. Having spent a lot of time in that particular time and place, they were fairly certain that wasn’t true, but that wasn’t surprising. The little things in history have a tendency of getting mixed up. The big things too sometimes.

“We’ll take two,” the Doctor said.

“That’ll be twelve coins,” the server said.

River reached for her money before the Doctor even asked. He was hopeless with money. Never seemed to have any, and if he did, he had some inappropriately huge amount.

The man handed them mugs of butterbeer, hooking a candy cane over the edge of each stein.

“Happy Holidays,” he said, and turned to sell to someone else.

The Doctor sniffed at his drink experimentally.

River took a big mouthful. “This is kind of good,” she said.

He stuck his tongue into the top of his drink. “Euggch,” he said, and promptly handed the mug to someone walking by.

River laughed. “Come on. We’ll find you something you do want.”

The Doctor wasn’t going to pass up phrasing like that. “Something other than you?”

She winked. “Something in addition to me.”

“Allons-y,” he said.


	5. Christmas Tree

As much as they disliked it, the Stormcage guards did occasionally have to let River Song out of her cell. This wasn’t 17th century Earth, and River was a prisoner but not mistreated. She had heavily supervised trips to the exercise room (Tuesdays, Thursday, and Saturdays), to go outside, even though it was always cold and raining and they had to stay under a covered area (Mondays and Wednesdays), and to the library (Fridays). Nothing happened on Sundays. Sundays were boring. Stormcage wasn’t a pleasant environment, but it wasn’t designed for torture. ** **  
****

River generally didn’t try to escape on these outings unless absolutely necessary. It was easier, for one thing, and consequently less fun. Plus, when she did escape, upon her return her out-of-cell privileges were seriously restricted, and she needed those excursions. She would go mad otherwise.

Today was a Tuesday, so River was dressed for exercise when the three guards unlocked her cell. One of them pointed a weapon at her chest while the others cuffed her arms.

“Hello boys,” she said.

They ignored her, as per their training.

She went with them obediently to the exercise room, where she used the fancy 51st century exercise equipment to keep her muscles fit and body healthy. She was serving twelve thousand consecutive life sentences. They didn’t want her dying in the first two years. She enjoyed the exercise. Her life with the Doctor tended to involve a lot of running for their lives so it helped to be in shape. Plus, it drove her nuts sometimes to just sit in her cell, hour after hour, reading and re-reading her journal, planning her next escape. Exercise released some of that frustration.

Her two hours were over too soon, and her guards came back to chain her up again. The exercise room was enclosed like her cell, so they could free her in there.

As River was brought back to her cell, something seemed different. Approaching the bars, she could start to see what it was. Placed directly in the middle was a perfect, tiny, three-foot tall Christmas tree, fully decorated with lights and ornaments, including little glass balls full of snow. She could smell it from the door. It smelled like someone had just brought in from the forest, piney and beautiful and cold.

River glanced at her guards. They didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. They let her back into the cell and undid her cuffs and River pretended the tree wasn’t there. If they couldn’t see it, she wasn’t going to point it out.

“Until tomorrow then!” She called after them, before whipping around to approach the surprise. It could only be from one person.

There, on the top of the tree, where a star might ordinarily go, was a teeny tiny piece of the Tardis. That’s why the guards couldn’t see it. Perception filter. Tucked into the branches was a note.

_You weren’t here. So maybe I’ll see you out there._

River wanted to laugh and cry. He’d left her a Christmas tree and he’d put a perception filter on it so the guards wouldn’t take it away. What’s more, he’d half-unintentionally given her a piece of the Tardis. The guards wouldn’t be coming around for a while so River plucked the bit of wood from the tree and held it to her heart. The Doctor had given her a little bit of home.


	6. Angel

“Will you do something for me?” The Doctor looked up from the controls to River, leaning against the console.

“What?” she said.

The Doctor hesitated. Despite their connection, there were many conversations he and River did not have. They didn’t sit around talking about their feelings or what they wanted, about their hopes and dreams and pasts and losses. They didn’t talk; they only acted. And there were so many things they simply couldn’t say. Spoilers. So it made him nervous to ask for something like this because they didn’t do this kind of thing.

“What is it?” River prompted.

“Will you come with me to Chiswick? Just for a couple of minutes.” He met her eyes.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” she said.

“I’m not going to do anything. I just want to see if she’s alright.”

“Of course I will,” River said. “Do you even need to ask?” It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but the Doctor wasn’t sure. He thought he did need to ask.

He didn’t know where Donna lived now, with her husband, so he landed the Tardis outside Sylvia and Wilf’s house. They wouldn’t recognize him, but maybe he could explain and they would tell him where to go.

To his surprise, when he opened the Tardis door, they wasn’t on the residential street he’d expected. The Tardis had taken them to downtown Chiswick, tucking herself into an alley.

River stepped out after him. “I thought we were going to her grandfather’s house.”

“I did too,” the Doctor said. “The Tardis must have brought us here for some reason.”

They walked out into the square, bustling and full of people finishing their Christmas shopping. A 15-foot tall tree was set up in the middle, covered in lights. A brass band was playing Christmas carols, but the musicians weren’t dressed as Santas so the Doctor figured it was alright. They looked human enough anyway. It was early evening and the first few stars were visible in a dark blue sky.

The Doctor and River stood there for a moment and then River saw the reason they’d come. The Tardis always did like Donna. River dived behind a phone box, a real phone box, for making telephone calls, pulling the Doctor with her. They needed to hide because while the Doctor wouldn’t be recognized, River would be.

Donna Noble was crossing the square, going between shops. Her winter coat was unzipped and she had several bags on each arm. She had a plastic identification badge clipped to the lapel of her suit, the kind they give you in big offices. Squinting, River could read “Temporary Pass” written on it in capital letters.

The Doctor couldn’t take his eyes off Donna. She looked like she was okay. Bright orange hair, wedding band still on her left hand, so that was good, although wedding bands alone don’t indicate the state of a marriage. She looked a bit harried and was carrying too many things. The Doctor wondered if it was Christmas Eve.

As she passed by their hiding place, Donna was stopped by a man in layers of mismatched clothing. River pulled the Doctor further behind the phone booth.

“Spare some change, miss?” the man said.

“Sorry, I’m kind of in a --”

“Just a bit?” He said. “I just want to buy something nice for my son.”

“Oh, alright,” Donna said. She fished through her various bags to find her purse and pulled out some money.

“Thanks, love,” he said. “You’re an angel.”

“I’m really not,” Donna said. “It’s nothing.”

“Merry Christmas, then,” the man said.

“Merry Christmas.” Donna crossed past the phone booth and entered another store.

The Doctor felt River take his hand and squeeze it tightly. “She’s alive,” she said.

He didn’t answer. He’d seen her temporary ID card, the pen ink on her fingers, the concern with everyday, mundane things in her eyes, and the belief that she wasn’t special in her voice. His words unsaid were, _but what kind of a life._

She would never know.


	7. Pie

River Song was not drunk enough to be making a pie. What had she been thinking. She couldn’t bake. River Song didn’t cook or bake or do domestic things. She could take care of herself, but it wasn’t refined. So why she had agreed to bake a pie for Amy and Rory’s Christmas party was beyond her. Madness, that’s what it was. Also, she was very tired because she’d had quite a few choir rehearsals that week. This was something not a lot of people knew about her. She loved choir. She was in two of them, actually! She sung alto, obviously, because altos are sexy. It was hard to get to rehearsal though, because her vortex manipulator could be imprecise, so sometimes she turned up three days early or two weeks late. On the other hand, the manipulator was useful because she’d missed a bunch of rehearsals recently because she’d been busy saving the universe, and it had let her go back in time and catch all the practices she’d missed. Time can be rewritten, after all.

River generally didn’t agree with rewriting time. She knew that sometimes it was unavoidable, and sometimes it was desirable, but on the whole she liked keeping things the way they’d originally turned out. Otherwise, she would live each day wondering if it was the second time she’d done that day, or the second time she’d done that activity but she didn’t remember the first time because something had happened and she was doing things again. She didn’t like thinking that her memories weren’t her own.

None of this helped with the pie though. She threw down the wooden spoon. This was rubbish. Maybe she should go buy a pie. But she’d said she’d make one, and River Song was nothing if not stubborn. She refused to give up now. This pie could be the worst pie in the history of pies but goddamn it she was going to finish it.

Maybe what she needed was a break. Pop out to the spa. She could be back in thirty seconds. The joys of time travel. But her vortex manipulator was on the fritz again. She needed the Doctor to look at it, but she didn’t want to ask him because she didn’t want him thinking she needed his help to get things done. She didn’t need anyone’s help, especially his. Well, he could be quite useful for when she needed to jump off of or out of things, but that was different. She did that with pizzaz. Asking him to fix her vortex manipulator didn’t have quite the same flair. She was surprised he let her keep it actually. As if she needed his permission, but she did sort of, only because he had taken it upon himself to police all time travel in the galaxy. Self-important idiot. River knew he only let Captain Jack have one because it didn’t work properly. Perhaps hers was penance. Her consolation prize for doing years in jail for a murder she didn’t commit. As in, sorry you’re in jail, honey. Here, have a time travel device. As if that made up for it. Well, it helped.

That’s it. River had to stop this rambling chain of thought and get back to the pie. She wanted to finish it so she could relax. It was Friday after all, and she had a number of episodes of her favourite television program queued up on 52nd century Netflix. Which wasn’t much better than 21st century Netflix, to be honest. The selection was still crap. There was just a bigger pool of good shows from which it didn’t choose.

She finally finished preparing the pie and it was ready to go in the oven. It was odd looking and possibly not tasty, and full of self-referential references and things that could have been meaningful insights if she’d spent more time on it, but it did have all the ingredients, and she’d mixed them according to the instructions. What more could she do? She studied it from a couple of angles. Fuck it, she thought. It’s done. Time to drink half a bottle of wine and watch TV shows buffer.


	8. Tinsel

River sat there with the piece of the Tardis in her hand for a long time. Finally, she put it back on the tree. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see her gift. More than anything, she wished in that moment that the Doctor was there. His note said he would look for her out in the universe. She wanted to try and find him, but she wasn’t sure where or when to start. Contrary to the appearance she cultivated, she didn’t have some kind of telepathic tracking device on him. She often had no idea where to look. This was one of those times.

A noise interrupted the silence. A very familiar noise. The Tardis. River felt a wave of gratitude, which she pushed away as weakness.

He popped his head out the door. “River! You’re here! I wanted to see if you liked your surprise. When did you get back? I’m not sure how long it’s been.”

 _Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry._ “It was a lovely surprise,” she said sassily. “But you here is an even better one.”

She bounced from her spot on the bed to kiss him long and hard.

“River,” he said into her mouth. Not a question. Just a statement.

She deepened the kiss, backing him against the side of the Tardis. _Don’t cry, don’t cry._

She felt him run his hands over her body. Yes, good. That’s what she had in mind. She pushed him inside the Tardis and felt more than saw it go invisible around them. Even better.

They didn’t make it out of the control room.

The Doctor sat on the seat next to the console and River straddled him, giving her the advantage.

 _Don’t cry, don’t cry._ She ground down harder against him. He hiked her dress up around her hips and she undid his pants.

Afterwards, she lay collapsed against him on the floor, head dropping onto his shoulder as he hugged her tightly.

He reached up suddenly and plucked something shiny from her curls.

“What’s that,” she mumbled.

The Doctor laughed. “I think it’s tinsel from your tree. I decorated it in here.”

River laughed too, and allowed herself a few more moments of snuggling against him. “I should get back out there.” She pulled back, standing up and rearranging her clothes.

He stood too and she leaned in for another kiss. “Thanks for the tree.”

“Anytime,” the Doctor said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere? We could do something fun!”

“Oh, this was fun enough for me,” River teased. “You go. I’ll catch you next time.”

“If that’s what you want.” He followed her down the ramp.

“See you soon,” she said.

“Don’t I know it.” He gave her a beautiful smile and disappeared inside the Tardis.

River tugged another piece of tinsel from her hair. _Don’t cry._


	9. Ice Skating

Dressed in Victorian clothes, River waltzed through the corridors of Stormcage back to her cell. What a perfect day it had been. She could have danced all night. The Doctor had taken her ice skating on the Thames, at the 1814 frost fair. The last great one. Stevie Wonder had sung for them. Even the sound of the alarms going off around her now couldn’t dampen her spirits.

She picked up the telephone. “Oh, turn it off. I’m breaking in, not out! This is River Song, back in her cell. Oh, and I’ll take breakfast at the usual time. Thank you!”

She hung up the phone and saw a Roman standing in the hallway. Rory.

He asked her to come to Demon’s Run and help the Doctor. River had to refuse.

“They’ve taken Amy,” he said. “And our baby. The Doctor’s getting some people together. We’re going after her, but he needs you too.”

River felt her heart constrict and her soul drop to her shoes. This was it. She turned around. “I can’t. Not yet, anyway.”

She got rid of Rory with excuses and a promise to turn up at the end. He didn’t understand. He would one day. Sometimes River felt like her whole life was like that. Full of people who would understand one day and no one who understood right now.

River banged her hand against the bars of her cell, hard. The bars vibrated and rung. She did it again. She wanted so much to be there. She and the Doctor were so careful with spoilers, but she did know that this time, she only turned up at the very end. She couldn’t be part of the battle. It was too timey-wimey. She wanted to go to him and _fix this_ , but she couldn’t.

River yanked the cell door closed behind her with a clang. She. Was. Not. Going. The thing is, she knew it would all work out okay. As long as she was standing here, she knew it had been successful. Her continued existence as she was implied that he had been and would be successful. She supposed though, that if he were unsuccessful, she would never know it. Her whole life would just blink out of existence, or she would suddenly be somewhere else, be someone else, and she would never know that anything had ever been different.

So River sat there in her cell and worried that all of this was going to go away and that she would turn around suddenly and be an adult member of the Silence, having killed the Doctor because he hadn’t saved her as a child.

She threw her journal across the room and wished with all her heart that she and the Doctor were living their lives in the same direction.


	10. Frost

“Get behind the wall!” River yanked Amy and Rory around the corner. Bullets rang off the concrete around them. They were in a skyscraper under construction and the Delorians was after them. The Delorians were a violent species, and a private one. The Ponds, River, and the Doctor had accidentally trespassed on their planet while attempting to do something together for Christmas, and in doing so had violated some fundamental law, for which the punishment was death. At this point, they were just trying to get back to the Tardis.

A bullet zinged by River’s head. Any closer and she would have lost some hair. She ducked behind the corner with the Ponds before sticking out just enough of her body to return fire. Rinse and repeat. She never left herself exposed long enough to become a target.

They couldn’t stay here. This situation was not tenable. And _where_ was the Doctor. It would be nice if he showed up to help.  
  
\---  
  
The Doctor, who had fallen behind three floors back, was busy trying to convince the two Delorians pointing weapons at him that they shouldn’t kill him.

“Well, now, see, you definitely don’t want to do that,” he said as they advanced on him. “Because I have this friend, and she’s coming to get me. And she won’t be very nice to you when she gets here. Really, we just want to be on our way. You could just let us go. It was all a big mistake!”

They ignored him.

“Also,” the Doctor continued, “if you kill me, you’ll never know where I hid the treasure.”

The Delorians paused and looked at each other.

“Treasure?”

“Yes! Me and my friends, we’re here on your planet to hide our treasure. We just didn’t know it was your planet, see. My apologies. And if you let us go, we’ll show you where the treasure is. And you can keep it!”

“We’re not stupid,” the one on the left said. “We’re not falling for that.”

“Of course not,” the Doctor said. “Which is why this arrangement will work out perfectly for everyone. I’m sure a couple of smart people like yourselves would really know what to do with all the extra money that comes from selling a big pile of treasure like that.”

The Delorians spoke to each other in low voices.

“Show us,” they demanded. “Slowly.”

The Doctor grinned. “It’s right this way. Back outside.”  
  
\---  
  
River, Amy, and Rory were cornered. The firing stopped as the Delorians realized this too.

“Looks like we’re going out the front,” Amy said.

“Why can’t we ever just have a nice, normal outing,” Rory mumbled.

“Hush,” River said. This was not going well. She set her guns and shook her arms in preparation. “Alright, you out there,” she called. “Come in and get us!”

“ _What!_ ” Rory yelped.

“It gives us the advantage,” River hissed.

The barrels of two guns pointed around the corner first, followed by two Delorian bodies. River wasted not a second; she only had one. She fired quickly. Bang bang bang bang. The Delorians dropped to the floor.

“Yes!” Amy said.

“Let’s go,” River said. “Now.”

They exited the building and were running back to the Tardis, waiting in the city park. As they drew nearer, they could see the Doctor gesturing wildly to the Tardis and back again at the Delorians standing in front of him.

“I promise,” they could hear him say as they got closer. “I swear I left it here by this big blue box.”

The Delorians were looking more and more unconvinced. One of them said something River missed and then stepped forward and hit the Doctor on the face.

“Okay,” River said. “You stay here.”

“But--” Amy started.

“I’ll be back.”

River crept from tree to tree until she was behind the Delorians with a clear shot. She stepped out.

“Don’t turn around,” she said. “Move an inch and you die.”

The Delorians started violently. They didn’t move though.

“Weapons on the ground,” River said.

They complied.

“I was doing fine, thank you River,” the Doctor said, rubbing his jaw.

“Of course, sweetie. You know I just like helping out. Now might I suggest we leave?”

“Amy! Rory!” the Doctor shouted.

The Ponds came running from their hiding place as he opened the Tardis door. The Delorians hadn’t moved.

River swivelled in a circle around the Delorians, coming to where she could see their faces. Amy and Rory dived inside the Tardis and the Doctor hovered in the doorway, waiting.

“Go inside,” River said. “I’m coming.”

The Doctor ducked back just enough to leave her space to follow. River faced the Delorians, away from the Doctor so he couldn’t hear what she said. She looked at them coldly, eyes the colour of frost. “If you even _think_ about trying to touch any of these people ever again, I will come for you. Believe me, I will.”  


“You didn’t take your treasure,” one of them said.

“Rule one,” River said, backing into the Tardis. “The Doctor lies.” She slammed the door shut and the Tardis began to disappear.  



	11. Eggnog

Maybe spiking the eggnog had been a bad idea. River Song had only wanted to liven up the party, but it turned out she’d had more to drink than anyone and was rather inappropriately cheerful. She was also hitting on everyone, which wasn’t so unusual, but River drunk could be very persuasive.

Maybe she just wanted something different. It was like she’d had the creeping suspicion that she wasn’t in control of her own life. She’d woken up that morning and wondered what she was doing with it. Her whole life had been about the Doctor. From her birth, to her abduction and her childhood, to growing up with Amy and Rory, to trying to kill the Doctor. After, she went into archaeology because she wanted find him, again. It was her last year at university and she’d spent so long looking for him that she didn’t know what to do next. She hadn’t found him, but she didn’t know what to do.

So yes, she was going to drink her spiked eggnog at this _5 à 7_ for a guest lecturer. And yes, maybe she’d have sex tonight with one of the men or women in her classes. Because she was her own person and she could do what she wanted.

Another tipsy graduate student holding a cup of eggnog walked by and she grabbed his shirt. “Well, hi there,” she said.

“Hey. River, right? We had 26th century history together?”

He was good-looking, in an archaeologist kind of way. She wondered what he would look like with his shirt off, covered in dirt. “That we did,” she said. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Like, out of here out of here?” He asked.

“Yes, like that.”

“Well, I would, but I don’t think my partner would like it. We’re not seeing other people right now,” he apologized.

“If you’re sure...”

“Yeah,” he said. “See you around.”

Well that was a total fail. Was she ever going to be able to do anything not somehow involving the Doctor? She abruptly went from cheerful to melancholy. Maybe she shouldn’t have put quite that much rum in. It was time to get out of here before she did something stupid. She went to find her coat.


	12. Cider

River Song was graduating from Luna University. It was the end of the year, the end of her last semester, and she was at a holiday party thrown by the archaeology department.

River hadn’t enjoyed all of her time at Luna. She’d spent a lot of it wishing she was somewhere else. Wishing she could be graduated already so she could be out there with the Doctor. It hadn’t been what she’d expected at first. There was just so much school, and she’d never been very keen on school. But she’d adapted and, much to her surprise, grown to love it. Luna meant a lot to her. It had been a stable place, and a home, and she was taking care of herself. She didn’t feel ready to leave. She was sad about it, and had been for months, but for some reason, on this the last day, she couldn’t quite summon up the feeling. It was like she was terribly upset and emotionless, all at the same time.

“Hey River,” Danz said, coming up to her with two cups of cider. Danz had been in her classes most of the way through. “Cider?”

“Thanks,” she said. “How are you? Do you know what you’re going to do after this?”

“Actually,” Danz said, “I’m not graduating this term. I didn’t have enough credits so I’m staying on for a while.”

“Better you than me,” River said. “I’m so ready to be out of here.”

“Really?” He said. “I’m going to miss this place like crazy when I go.”

“Yeah,” River said. She was too. She didn’t know why she’d said that.

“You must be excited,” he said. “New job, new life.”

River laughed. “You could put it that way. Hardly a new life.”

“Well, we’ll all miss you when you go,” he said. “Cheers.” He wandered off to say hello to other people.

River stood there sipping on her cider. She looked around for someone else to talk to. To be honest, many of her friends, such as they were, had already moved on. She hadn’t been particularly close to anyone. She’d had trouble finding people to talk to. They all just seemed so young and in the middle of lives that had such limited perspectives. She had been raised from birth to murder a Time Lord. There weren’t a lot of people with that on their CV. She could fly a Tardis, something her fellow students had only read about. Dinner parties could be hell.

She hovered at the edge of the busy room, full of people talking and eating and wishing each other happy holidays. Her favourite professor suddenly become available on the other side of the room. She wanted to say something meaningful to him. Something about how his class had been the brightest, best part of her time at Luna. That felt too honest, though. River wasn’t big on emotional honesty.

“Professor Nieta,” she said.

He turned around. “River! How lovely to see you here. Are you enjoying the party?”

“It’s a good party,” she said.

“You’re graduating, aren’t you?”

River nodded.

“Well, we’re certainly going to miss you around here. You’ve been a very valuable part of this school, even if we took you a bit for granted while you were here.”

River decided to take that as a compliment. It was true, she hadn’t participated as much as she could have. But she’d been very involved in her work, and that was a way of contributing, she supposed. She had just wanted to learn as much about the Doctor as possible.

“Are you all ready to move on?” He asked.

“I think so,” River said. “I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your class. It was a big part of my time here.”

“Well I enjoyed having you in it. You had a lot to offer.”

Someone called to him from across the room.

“I have to go,” he said, “So this is goodbye.”

He gave her a hug, which she hadn’t known she’d wanted until it happened.

“Keep in touch,” he said.

“I will.”

Professor Nieta left and River was standing by herself again. She looked around and realized she would never see most of these people again. The ones she’d liked and the ones she hadn’t, people she’d known well or only by name, all of these people she’d worked with and talked to, who had their own lives and histories and futures, who would go on to do things she would never be a part of. It was strange, to look at someone you’d known and to know you would probably never talk to them again, would not be involved in their future at all. That they would go on to take classes like the ones you’d had together, and do projects like the ones you’d done, but you wouldn’t be there. River Song wondered if they would remember her. If it had been worth it. She hadn’t found the Doctor. But she supposed that maybe she’d found herself. And that had the potential to be worth quite a lot.


	13. Peppermint

The Doctor and Donna ended up by accident on a planet in the 33rd century. They had been intending to go to the beach. Donna stepped out of the Tardis in shorts and a t-shirt, beach bag and towel in hand. It was snowing.

She turned around to glare. “Doc-tor,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, not quite the beach. But this is good too! Hey! It’s the holidays! This should be fun.” There were Christmas decorations all over the small town they’d landed in.

Donna gestured to her outfit.

“I can wait,” he said. He, of course, hadn’t changed clothes for the weather.

Donna rolled her eyes and went back inside.

After what seemed like an interminable period of time to the Doctor, she re-emerged dressed for winter.

“Next time,” she said. “Next time it will be warm.”

“Let’s have a look around, then,” he said.

The Tardis was parked in an alley behind a row of restaurants, all appearing to be doing very good business.

The Doctor wandered around looking at things, but there didn’t appear to be anything to do, specifically. It was daytime, around lunch, and it was looking like there were no adventures to be had.

Donna trailed along behind, in rather a bad mood. She wondered what it would take to get them out of there. Maybe she should fake an illness.

Apparently fate was listening because at that moment, Donna slipped on the ice and her feet went flying out from under her and she landed on her back with a shriek, whacking her head on the ground.

“Donna!” The Doctor rushed up to her. “Are you alright?” He helped her to sit up.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, a little dazed. She touched her head carefully. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with it.

“Maybe we should go,” the Doctor said. “Do you want to go?”

Donna tried not to laugh. She had gotten what she wanted, but she hadn’t expected so many bruises in exchange. “Can we just sit for a minute somewhere?”  
Donna stood and they entered the nearest café, where she sat gratefully at a table. The Doctor hovered.

“Do you want anything?”

“Do you have any money?” Donna asked wisely.

“Oh. No.”

The waitress came up to them with a mug and a glass of water on a tray. “Here you go,” she said. “One peppermint tea for the lady and one glass of water for the gentleman.”

“But we didn’t order these,” the Doctor started, at the same time as Donna said, “Peppermint tea! My favourite.”

“They were paid for by the woman over there,” the waitress said, gesturing to an empty booth in the corner. “She was just there a second ago.”

They all looked around, just in time to see someone with curly blonde hair in a white shearling jacket walk out the door. They caught her face in profile, just for a second.

The Doctor and Donna looked at each other.

“That looked just like...” Donna trailed off. “It couldn’t be, could it?”  
The Doctor stared after the woman for a long moment. “How’s your tea?” He said, refocusing on Donna.

“Doctor!”

“If it was, I don’t want to know,” he said.

Donna wasn’t planning on leaving the subject there, but the expression on the Doctor’s face made her change her mind. “Just as long as the next planet is warm,” she said.


	14. Gingerbread

“Why isn’t there any food?” River called from the Tardis kitchen.

“Kind of busy here!” The Doctor yelled back from under the console.

“No, but seriously,” she said, coming into the room. “Why is all the rum gone?”

The Doctor yanked his head out to look at her. “ _I don’t know._ There are other problems we’re having here. If I don’t restore power to the Tardis we may never leave this planet.”

“Hence my question about the food.” River winked coyly, just to annoy him.

“Arrgh.” The Doctor banged his sonic screwdriver against his head. “Would you just get over here and help?”

“I thought you didn’t want my help. I thought I was ‘making it all worse.’”

“Yes, I apologize. Now I need your help.”

“I love it when you admit you’re wrong.”

“Won’t happen again. Pass me the spanner.”

River took it and started fixing that bit herself.  
  
\---  
  
Eight hours later and they had to admit they were not fixing this themselves.

“We need more dilithium crystals,” River said. “That’s all there is to it. I think we flew over a mine on our way in. I don’t think it’s far from here.”

“What do you mean, we flew over a mine. We’re in a box. There aren’t any windows. And we don’t even fly. We travel through time and space.”

“Well some of us actually look at the proximity readings when we’re landing our boxes from travelling through time and space.”

“But if you always know what’s outside it’s not any fun!”

“All the same, dear, the Tardis is out of power and there is a dilithium crystal mine to the west. Unless you want to take up permanent residence here?”

“Off we go,” he said.  
  
\---  
  
It quickly became apparent that they were going to get lost unless they marked a path somehow. Whatever had drained the Tardis’ power had also drained all electronics on board, including River’s handheld devices. The sonic screwdriver had escaped somehow. So River grabbed a bag of precious stones out of storage that were probably very valuable somewhere, somewhen, but which the Doctor had had for ages and didn’t know what they were, other than pretty. She kept track of their path by placing one on the ground as often as necessary. They glowed slightly in the shaded forest. Unfortunately, they reached the end of the bag of stones without finding the mine and it was getting too dark to continue.

“I think we should go back,” River said, “And try again tomorrow.” She was highly frustrated. The Doctor was too, but he conceded and they headed back to the Tardis.  
  
\---  
  
They tried again the next morning, this time in a slightly different direction and packing more supplies with them. They hadn’t picked up their stones on the way back because they thought they’d be going the same way again. They didn’t really have anything else that would be suitable. The Doctor had some jelly babies in his pocket though, so they used those instead, after River finished making comments about how there was no food in the Tardis but he had a large bag of candy on his person. Unfortunately, they got to the end of that day as well, and hadn’t found the mine, and had to turn around. At which point, they realized that birds had eaten all the jelly babies and they didn’t know how to get back to the Tardis.

“Fuck,” River said.

“Yes,” said the Doctor.

They wandered around for a while, totally lost, before seeing a structure through the trees, possibly a house.

“It’s the mine!” The Doctor said.

“Possibly.” River was skeptical. She thought it highly unlikely that they would stumble upon it like this.

They continued towards it anyway, because it was a structure and they were lost in the woods and who wouldn’t. They got close enough to see that it was made out of something strange.

“Is that...” River said.

“Gingerbread.”

They looked at each other.

“That’s different,” the Doctor said. “Let’s see who’s home!”

They approached the house. It was indeed made of gingerbread, covered in icing and candies and chocolates.

“Hellooo!” called River. No answer. She eyed the house. “Do you think it’s edible?”

The Doctor reached up and broke a corner off the eve, popping it into his mouth before she could say anything else. He promptly spat it out. “Disgusting, but edible,” he said.

“Excellent.” River shoved a handful into her mouth. “This is the best house I have ever eaten,” she mumbled around the gingerbread.

They heard a noise from within. “I thought no one was here,” River said. They backed up slightly.

The gingerbread front door swung slowly open, and... “EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE.”

“Dalek!” The Doctor shouted. River already had her gun in hand, but it was too late. The dalek pointed its firearms, which were also its regular arms, at them.

“YOU HAVE EATEN THE HOUSE OF DALEK. YOU WILL SURRENDER.”

They put their hands up. It pointed to the Doctor.

“YOU WILL STAY IN THE HOUSE OF DALEK UNTIL YOU CAN BE RETRIEVED BY THE DALEK MOTHERSHIP.” It pointed to River. “YOU WILL CLEAN THE HOUSE OF DALEK.”

“Like hell!”

“River, just, go along with it. At least it hasn’t started murdering yet.”

River sighed huffily, though the Doctor was right. The dalek herded him into a cage beside the house. The cage door clanged shut and locked. The dalek swung around to face River and indicated a pile of supplies in the corner, including several slabs of gingerbread and icing, like bricks and mortar. River started making repairs.

An hour later, she heard the faint sounds of a dalek ship, very high above.

“THE DALEK SHIP IS HERE TO RETRIEVE THE DOCTOR. THE DOCTOR’S COMPANION WILL VERIFY THAT THE TRANSPORTER IS READY.”

River put down her trowel and bucket of icing. She approached the transporter, a circle in the center of the room delineated by metal pegs stuck in the ground. She poked at them cautiously. “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s on.” And when the dalek swiveled around to go and retrieve the Doctor, River leapt up and with one big push shoved it backwards into the transporter circle. It disappeared in a flash. “And FYI I’m his wife!” She shouted after it.

River ran outside to free the Doctor.

“And off we go, sweetie,” she said.

“What did you do?” The Doctor asked. “Where’s the dalek?”

“Oh, it’s gone,” she said. “A victim of it’s own success. Come on, let’s go. I’ll tell you about it later.”

The Doctor leapt out of the cage. “Before we go, though,” he said, “While I was out here doing nothing, I was studying the house. Don’t you think some of those candies seem a bit...shiny?”

River looked more closely. “Dilithium crystals!”

“It’s our lucky day. Of course, anything built by the daleks would have dilithium crystals on it. They know how much Time Lords need them, so they like to steal as much as possible and use it as decoration.” He pulled some off the wall. “And in this case, that worked out in our favour.”

They gathered more than enough crystal to solve their current problem and were even able to use it to find their way back. The crystal created a tugging sensation in the direction of the Tardis; she was calling to it.

They fixed the Tardis and she hummed happily to life, carrying them off into the vortex of time and space, where the Doctor and River lived happily ever after, except for the part where they were traveling through time in opposite directions and only very rarely met as they knew each other best. But every relationship has its challenges.


	15. Presents

The Doctor felt like he should get River a Christmas present, but it had been so long since he’d had to buy for someone that he wasn’t sure where to start. He wanted to do something special for her, they were newly married after all, but he didn’t know what that something special was. What did you get for your time travelling wife who’d murdered you?

He went through a lot of options. He considered going to the forest moon of Endor for rare and beautiful leaves; to the backwards waterfalls of Maroon where they captured the water in glass tubes so you could take it with you; to the Grand Canyon of Orion so he could bring her the precious sand. None of that seemed like enough, though. Those were some of the most beautiful gifts in the universe, but they didn’t seem like enough.

He realized that he was going about this the wrong way. He couldn’t just give her something, he needed to do something, show her something, go somewhere. Because the gift he wanted to give her, the only one that mattered, was time. Not his time, because that sounded selfish and self-aggrandizing, but time in general. He wanted to take her somewhere where time stood still, where they could stay for a while, just the two of them, without their timelines pulling them apart.

He knew what the gift would be.

\---  
  
“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” The Doctor grinned at River. He knew how that annoyed her.

“Oh, come on. Tell me!” As much as River was dying to know, she also kind of didn’t. She liked it when she didn’t know what was going to happen, liked the surprise and the adventure.

“We’ll be there soon.”

“The Tardis travels through time and space. We could be there _now_.”

“But what’s the fun in that?”

\---  
  
The Doctor parked the Tardis, as much as he could, and opened the door for River. They weren’t on the ground, they were drifting around in a nebula. River stood there looking out the door.

“We can’t leave the Tardis. What are we doing here?”

The Doctor came up behind her. “Just wait.”

The nebula started to spin slowly, pulling in gases and chunks of rock and space.

“It’s creating a star,” River said.

“Venus,” the Doctor said. “The most beautiful star in the night sky.”

They watched it happen.

“This isn’t the only part of the gift,” the Doctor said. “The creation of Venus also has timey-wimey associations. There was a fissure in space-time in this spot once. Time moves more slowly here. We’re in a sort of time bubble. Things won’t change. Things won’t age. We can just...pretend like we’re moving forward together in time, as long as we’re here.”

River looked up at him but he wasn’t looking at her, watching instead the creation of Venus. It was such a sentimental gift, he felt embarrassed to give it to her. River turned to him though, and wrapped her arms around his waist. She was older than him at that point. She had less time left. He had more. Time was the only thing she wanted and although he couldn’t really give it to her, he understood that’s what she needed.

“Merry Christmas,” she said into his shoulder.

“Merry Christmas, River.”


	16. Fireplace

The Doctor and River had sex in front of a fireplace once. It was just how they thought it would be.


	17. Stockings/Socks

The Doctor understood now what the Tardis had been doing. The whole Christmas season while Amy was pregnant/not-pregnant, the Doctor kept finding his Baby’s First Christmas stocking everywhere.

The first place it turned up was his sock drawer. He pulled it out, frowning. “What are you doing here?” He left it there though, and didn’t think anymore about it.

The second place he found it was in the kitchen. He went in for a cup of tea, and there it was on the table. Never ignore a coincidence, unless you’re busy, then always ignore a coincidence. He happened to be busy at the moment, so he left it there that time too.

The third place he found it was the library. It was hanging on the mantle over a crackling fire, like there was nothing unusual about that at all. Like someone had hung it for Father Christmas. This time he paid attention. The Doctor tugged the stocking off the nail, studying it from all angles, reading the Gallifreyan words and his name on the front. He patted the fireplace.

“What are you trying to tell me,” he asked the Tardis softly. She didn’t answer, because she couldn’t, not in words, but she hummed sort of huffily as if to say, _I am telling you._ He was supposed to figure it out.

When he saw his cot at Demon’s Run, when he read his name on it too, when River wrapped his hand around the edge, that’s when he understood.

River Song was a child of the Tardis. And the Tardis was really happy about it.


	18. Cookies/Milk

Well, that hadn’t quite gone according to plan. The Doctor had accidentally parked the Tardis inside a chimney.

River raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said.

He pushed the door open as wide as possible, which was less than a foot, and shimmied his way into the room beyond.

“Ooh, look!” he said. “It must be Christmas Eve.” He glanced down. “And I’m covered in soot. Coming, River?”

“I am not,” she replied. “We’re in someone’s house! What is there to do anyway? Let’s get back to the plan.”

“Well, there’s snacks for starters!” He grabbed a cookie off a plate near the Christmas tree and popped it in his mouth.

“Doctor!” River said, made more comical by the fact that she was still peering out from the Tardis. “You can’t eat those! They’re for Santa Claus.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, who’s to say I’m not him?”

“You’re not Santa Claus!”

“Pass me something from inside the Tardis. I’m going to leave a present.” He started to reach for the glass of milk and stopped. Bovine lactose. Disgusting.

He was hit in the back by the book River tossed him. He had no idea where in the Tardis she’d found it. Obviously not far from the console room as she’d been gone only briefly.

“This is my only copy of that one!” He protested, holding up the Agatha Christie novel.

“Yes, well, it’s the only one that wasn’t published in the future,” she said.

The Doctor pulled a bow off another present and stuck it on the book, placing it under the tree. He finished the second cookie and wedged himself back into the Tardis.

“Some parent is going to be very confused in the morning,” River said, wrapping her arms around him. “They’re going to wonder who ate the cookies and where that book came from.”

“It’s good for them to wonder,” the Doctor said. “Now. Where were we?”


	19. Santa

“He’s been making a list, checking it twice,” the Doctor said, swiveling around to hand River a moderately sized gift-wrapped box

“Finding out who’s been naughty and nice? I know which list I’d rather be on.” She took the box and shook it gently. Wrapped boxes from the Doctor should always be handled carefully; you never know what might be inside.

“Tell me what it is,” she said.

“Open it.”

She started taking the paper off, peeling back the tape one tiny little bit at a time.

“River!”

She finally reached the box inside the paper and opened it too.

“Doctor,” she said. “They’re beautiful.” She pulled out a pair of sky high, dark red Louboutins.

“I saw them and thought of you,” he said. “I wanted you to have them.”

River leaned forward to kiss him. “Thank you. I love them.” She kicked her own shoes off and put the new ones on, using one hand to balance on the Doctor. The shoes looked inexplicably perfect and simultaneously ridiculous with her functional pants and jacket.

“I don’t think they really go with this outfit,” River said, laughing.

The Doctor moved in closer. “Why don’t you lose the outfit, then.”

“And leave the shoes? I think we can make that work.”


	20. Sled

The Doctor tripped over the sled on his way into the Tardis. It was one of those big, old-fashioned wooden ones that had mostly ceased to be used by Amy’s time, as the chances of the child injuring him- or herself were very high. Plastic was in

“What is this doing here?”

Amy popped up from behind the console where she had been tying the laces on her winter boots. “We’re going sledding! RORY.”

Rory emerged from the back room, zipping up his jacket.

The Doctor stood there looking at them. “You look like Martians,” he said. “Could you be wearing more clothes?”

“Hey!” Amy said. “It’s cold out.”

“You don’t even know what planet we’re on.”

“Yes, but you promised us a planet with snow. And hills. Does this planet not have snow and hills? _Where are we?_ ”

The Doctor brushed snow off his sleeve pointedly. He’d gone outside already without waiting for Amy and Rory. He figured it wasn’t his fault if they were slow and required obscene amounts of clothing. Although, he had to admit, it was very cold out. To be perfectly honest, he’d come back inside for a jacket. And a hat. Why pass up the opportunity to wear a hat?

The Doctor considered dragging this out to tease them, but he was almost as excited as they were. “Yes! There are snow and hills. Just let me...” He went for his winter jacket.

“Ha!” Amy said. “I knew it.” She waited until he was back and they started for the door. “When is River coming?”

“Well, she’s not, actually.”

“I thought she was,” Rory said.

“Well, she’s not! She’s busy.” The Doctor dodged the unasked question and ushered them out the door, locking it behind him.

“Doctor!” Amy said. “It’s beautiful.”

And it was. A winter wonderland, perfect for sledding, with no one else in sight.

The Doctor raced off with Amy and Rory to sled down the hill. He wished River was there. Rory had been right, she was supposed to come today, but they’d had a big argument, their biggest yet, and now she wasn’t. They hadn’t spoken since the fight and he missed her. He didn’t know how to break the silence, how to talk to her again. From the look of Future River, from his past, they had clearly made up at some point, but he didn’t know when. He flung himself onto the sled laughing after a shrieking Amy. He wanted River. Just to be there.


	21. Snowman

“But that means the snow is alive!”

“Yes, apparently it does.” The Doctor pulled his arm out of Clara’s grasp. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be off.”

“You can’t! You have to help us.”

“This time, you’re just going to have to help yourselves.”  
  
\---  
  
The Doctor was beginning to think that coming back to Earth, at Christmas, had been a very bad idea. Not beginning to think, actually. He was convinced now that this had been a terrible plan. Why did bad things always happen here, at Christmas? All he’d wanted was to get lost in the crowd for a few days. Be on Earth without being on Earth. He’d chosen the late 19th century because it seemed unlikely that anything overly exciting would happen. Had he ever been wrong.

Because now there were snowmen trying to kill everyone and who knows what else. And everybody expected him to do something about it. Well, he didn’t want to do something about it. He wanted to be left alone. No one clawing at him. No life or death situations. On top of which, there was Clara. She was too much like Amy. Too alive, not enough in awe of him. His hearts had almost lifted a bit upon talking to her, and then he felt horribly guilty. So he snapped at her.

He was little bit angry at River as well. She was pardoned. She was out of prison. They were both advanced in their timelines; they knew each other well. She was a professor, which meant the end was closer than the beginning. And yet she still wouldn’t travel with him. He had always thought that eventually they would travel forwards in time together, at least for a while. He was wondering now though if River had ever wanted that. Maybe she liked meeting him randomly. Only having adventures.

Like this one. This was an adventure, whether he wanted it to be or not. He could pretend he didn’t care all he wanted, but the truth was he did care. He would always care.

“Okay,” the Doctor said to himself. “Evil snowmen.”  
  
\---  
  
The Doctor ran around the corner at top speed. He saw Clara standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by swirling snow. It wasn’t moving at random either. It was deliberately closing in on her, choking her as she breathed it in, obscuring her vision, pulling at her clothes, trapping her.

“No!” She choked out. “I don’t want to go. STOP IT.”

The Doctor didn’t know what to do. It was _snow_. He couldn’t just stand there though.

“GERONIMOOOO,” he yelled, grabbing a torch out of a wall bracket and charging towards Clara. He threw himself at the blizzard around her, waving the torch around.

The snow didn’t like that. Several flakes of it turned to water, dripping down Clara’s face. It recoiled en masse, hovering to the side.

The Doctor stabbed at it again with the flame. “And stay away!”

The snow made another attempt to surround them, then retreated angrily. It left them standing in the street.

“Thank you,” Clara gasped. “I didn’t think you were coming back.” She stood up straighter, brushing herself off.

“Neither did I,” he said. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I think so.”

They stood uncertainly in front of each other. Pretty much all they’d done so far was be rude; the Doctor wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“I’m sorry for trying to make you do something you didn’t want to,” Clara said firmly. “That was wrong.”

He paused. “Apology accepted.”

“But will you...are you going to, now...”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m going to help. Because I have to protect this planet long enough for some very special people to come along.”

“Okay,” she said. “Good enough for me. Shall we?”

“We shall.”


	22. Jingle Bells/Sleigh Bells

It wasn’t until he’d been time travelling with River Song for a while that the Doctor realized he was going to need a diary of his own. River had never asked where his was, so he hadn’t thought to have one, but he realized later that she probably didn’t ask once she knew how “young” he was.

It didn’t take long for their timelines to get complicated, though, and the Doctor was having trouble keeping it straight. Especially after the wedding and his death and River’s imprisonment. That’s when things started getting really timey-wimey.

He had bought River’s diary on a planet somewhere in the past, not knowing it would be for her. He’d just liked it because it looked like the Tardis, so he kept it around. He had been accordingly startled when he saw it in the library. Because it looked just like the one he had lying around in the Tardis. After that whole crazy day in the Third Reich, he knew she had gotten it from him. So he gave it to her.

When he decided to get one, he wanted one that matched River’s so he went back to the place where he bought it.

It was Christmas in a society on the cusp of the industrial era. Carriages pulled by horses rolled past him down the street, their sleigh bells jingling. There were carolers on the corner and boys selling newspapers. The Doctor set about trying to find the right shop. It turned out they didn’t have a matching diary, but they did have one that was sort of close.

The Doctor sat in the console room of the Tardis, studying his purchase. He liked it immediately. It was an blank diary and he already felt closer to River. He started listing everything they’d done. It took him the rest of the day.


	23. Carols

The doorbell rang. Donna got up to answer it when no one else did.

“If it’s carol singers,” Wilf said, “Give them a quid and tell them to bugger off.”

“Dad,” Sylvia admonished.

Donna reached the door and flung it open. There was a tall, skinny man standing on the doorstep in his customary tweed jacket and bowtie.

“John!” She said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

It was John Smith, a good friend of a friend whom she ran into occasionally. They’d gone for coffee a few times and had had a good time. She liked it when he was around. She didn’t know why he’d be standing on her doorstep though, holding a CD player and a number of large cards.

He held a finger to his lips indicating silence, and turned on the CD player. Choral music came out.

“Who is it?” Sylvia called.

John held up the first sign. _Say it’s carol singers._

Donna paused, then, “It’s carol singers.”

He held up the second sign. _I just wanted to tell you..._

Third sign. _Without extra meanings or expectations..._

_Just because it’s Christmas --_

_\-- And at Christmas bad things happen..._

_That you’re the most important woman in the whole of creation..._

_And I will never forget you._

Donna blinked. This was unexpected. It didn’t sound romantic, precisely, but she didn’t know what else it could be.

“John,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m going away for a while so we might not meet again, and I just wanted to tell you that.”

He picked up the CD player and the cards and started to walk away.

Donna’s head hurt a little bit. Not a lot, but like there was a pressure building up inside her skull. She took a couple of deep, slow breaths and it eased off. ****  
****

John was halfway down the street. On impulse, she ran after him.

“Wait,” Donna said.

He turned around and she wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. He hugged her back a little awkwardly, still holding the cards and stereo.

Donna pulled back and patted the front of his jacket before turning to go back to her house.

She reached the front door in time to watch a woman with wild, curly hair emerge from the shadows to join John as he walked around the corner.

Donna didn’t know what had just happened, but she felt better for some reason. She shut the door behind her.


	24. Chestnuts

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” the Doctor sang to himself as he bounced around the Tardis.

He looked up, expecting someone to chime in. It was only when silence greeted him that he remembered no one else was there. He’d forgotten, for a moment, and it had been lovely. But reality was the Ponds were gone. River had stayed for a while, but she too was gone. And now it was almost Christmas and he was alone.

It wasn’t going so badly this time. Being alone. He’d visited a few places, nothing disastrous had happened. He hadn’t yet had the urge to alter the laws of time. Mars had been three hundred years ago but he hadn’t forgotten. It still haunted him. He had so many memories that caused him pain that he had to learn how to live with them, or he wouldn’t live at all. Mars was special though. He knew that dark place was inside him and he had no desire to revisit it.

He couldn’t believe he’d been singing just now. He hadn’t been happy in months. He suspected it wouldn’t last.

“Where should we go for Christmas this year?” he asked the Tardis. Maybe he would let her pick. All he wanted was any place but Earth. He wasn’t ready for more humans yet. No humans.

He entered generic coordinates into the Tardis and waited for her to choose. “Come on, darling,” he said. “Take me somewhere.”

The Tardis began to hum and spin into the time vortex. The Doctor closed his eyes and let the sensation resonate through his body.

The Tardis parked and the Doctor patted the console. “Thank you.”

He bounced to the door. “And where have you taken us?”

He opened the door to Victorian era.

England.

Earth.

His slightly good mood vanished entirely. He yanked his head back inside to glare at the console. “I said anywhere but Earth!”

He slammed the door shut and stomped back up to the controls. “Let’s try this again.” He re-entered the guidelines for random coordinates and set the Tardis to fly.

She landed and he opened the door.

They were in the exact same spot. Not just the same time or place, but literally the identical parking spot, down to the inch. Which was more or less impossible.

The Doctor whipped his head around to look inside again. “What,” he said. “Do you want from me?”

No answer from the Tardis.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re clearly here for a reason. I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to know, but you’re obviously convinced about something. So I’m going out to look around. For fifteen minutes. And then we’re leaving. Agreed?”

One of the interior doors popped open to reveal a closet full of Victorian clothes.

“Good point,” he said.

The Doctor changed and cautiously left the Tardis. He was not looking for trouble. He was only out here to satisfy her, so he would walk around, slowly and carefully, for fifteen minutes, and then he’d come back and they’d leave. That was all.

He walked down the alley and out onto the road. There seemed to be kind of a hullabaloo happening, which did not bode well. He knew on some level that the Tardis would not have brought him here twice without cause; he was just trying to deny it for as long as possible. Saving Earth was not on the agenda this Christmas.

He saw the cause of the commotion. There were a number of people gathered around a distraught young woman.

“It was trying to kill me!” she insisted. “The snow! It’s dangerous!” Snow still fluttered around her in the air, but it didn’t seem to be acting un-snow-like for the moment.

A couple people in the crowd tried to restrain her.

“Don’t touch me!” she said. “I’m not crazy. It’s real. The snow is evil!”

From the back of the crowd, the Doctor believed her. And really wished he hadn’t. Maybe he could tell the Tardis he hadn’t seen anything. He turned to leave.

“Doctor!” he heard from behind him. It was the woman. “Doctor!”

She broke through the crowd to run after him. “Doctor, stop!” She grabbed his arm. “I’ve been looking for you. I was out looking for you and I was attacked. It knows I’m trying to stop it. It’s trying to kill me.”

“Sorry, can’t help you,” he said, not pausing in his mission to get back to the Tardis.

“But you have to!”

He stopped. “No. I don’t. Not my problem.” He walked away faster than she could keep up and left her standing there in the street.

The Tardis was going to have his ass for that one.


	25. Christmas Movies/Music

It was only when River saw the Doctor in Manhattan that she realized they were time travelling only loosely in opposite directions. She had believed, all this time, that it was exactly opposite. Every time she saw him, he was younger, and every time he saw her she was younger too. Perhaps it had snowballed. She had told him right from his beginning that they were going in opposite directions because it was what he had told her when she was young. But perhaps he’d only told her that because she’d told him. Time travel.

The end result was that when she kissed him in Stormcage and he’d said there was a first time for everything, she really believed that it had been their last. The last time she’d seen him before Manhattan was the Byzantium, and it still seemed to be true. He certainly knew her less there. She didn’t try to kiss him that time. She knew better now, as much as it hurt her heart. All of that history was behind her, but he still had all of it to go. It would have to be enough.

But the Doctor that arrived in New York in response to her call hadn’t been younger than at the Byzantium. Amy wasn’t younger either. She was as old as River had ever seen her, early thirties maybe.

And the Doctor. He was as advanced as she. River noticed something was different almost immediately.

He blasted into New York in the Tardis and waltzed into the room where she was being held prisoner.

“Sorry I’m late, honey. Traffic was hell.”

Those weren’t the words of a man who barely knew her. And he said it in a flirtatious tone she wasn’t expecting either. It was voice she hadn’t heard in a long time.

She laughed and the Doctor came towards her.

“So where are we now, Doctor Song? How’s prison?”

“Oh, I was pardoned ages ago. And it’s Professor Song to you,” she teased.

Did he flinch a bit at that? Did he pause for too long? She wondered why.

“Pardoned?” he said.

She started to explain, but her mind was thinking other things entirely. He knew she’d been in prison. He knew why. He called her honey. What did this mean? She risked a spoiler to find out.

“It’s almost as if someone’s gone around deleting himself from every database in the universe.”

“Hmm,” he said. “You said I got too big.”

River couldn’t believe it. This was the oldest Doctor she’d ever encountered. And she

was the oldest she’d ever been, because from her perspective, she couldn’t be anything else. It felt like this incredible gift she’d been given, to see him again as she knew him best. Their love story wasn’t one of those cheesy Christmas movies, where a child didn’t believe in Santa and then he did, and two adults in his life got together and everyone became happy family. Theirs was a tale spanning all of time and space, and it wasn’t clean. There would be no happy ending. Their story would eventually end, and not in the way anyone would wish on their enemy. River didn’t know what the ending would be, but, at least until now, she had assumed that one day it would just be over. She would know him less and less until they were strangers. And after that they’d be nothing. She would never see him again.

Seeing him like this though, in New York, both of them advanced in their timelines, lit a flicker of hope in her that had been close to dead for so many years. Maybe it didn’t have to be that way. Maybe they would be both going forward now. Maybe they could live out their lives and grow old together.

But that wouldn’t work, River thought, because the Doctor didn’t age. One day, she would die, but the Doctor would keep regenerating until he couldn’t any longer. She didn’t know if that kind of ending would be better or worse. Better for her, without question, because she would have lived the rest of her life with him and died with him there, but so much harder on the Doctor. It would be better for him, easier, if she were to just keep getting younger until they never saw each other again. Because then he could always live in hope that there might be one more day. That he might see her somewhere even if she didn’t see him.

So she didn’t want to know if they were now travelling in the same direction. She didn’t want him to know either. Which was why, after everything that happened in Manhattan, she refused to travel with him. It was better that way.

\---  
  
For a while, it would seem like her gift was permanent. She saw him again, old like her, travelling in the same direction. They went to the Singing Towers of Delirium and it was beautiful. She called for him in the Library and he came.

But this time it wasn’t the Doctor she knew. Her deepest fear had come to pass. He didn’t know her. And it was also for the best.

She could do one last thing. She refused to let him die, and take all of her memories with him. She refused to let him take away everything she had on the day that they met. She gave him the gift of their future; her past. And it was alright.


End file.
